"I kept it for his courtesy, like I said with his phone, key and wallet," Bradley told investigators. "It's my mistake. I forgot to give him his stuff back and he tracked it."
For anyone who knows policing, evidence and suspect possessions do NOT go the arresting officer's home for obvious reasons.
Police need reform. Police unions need to go entirely. Police unions exist primarily to prevent police from consequences of their abuses of power. The State doesn't need unions to protect itself from its citizens.
Generally I'd say public sector unions (especially in essential services) are of very questionable benefit and need limits, but robust private sector unions are much more obviously beneficial to society.
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In the private sector the incentives are mostly aligned for producing reasonable deals, because both sides rely on the business being healthy and making a profit and the jobs fundamentally rely on that.
In the public sector they aren't aligned. The politician is most incentivized to avoid immediate political turmoil. Voters are not market analysts who recognize and have a problem with deals that produce massive costs in the long-run (ex: exceptionally young or exceptionally generous retirement). The union is often aware it can extort the public with the threat of causing chaos. Government can raise taxes/take on heavier debt, which further weakens it's negotiating position - in all but the most extreme cases it won't be going into bankruptcy or ceasing to exist, taxpayers in 30 years will just be on the hook for paying a bad deal made by a previous generation.
Public sector unions, like all unions, are designed to level the power imbalance between worker and employer. Nothing about public/private employers changes this dynamic.
The argument for a union is that they keep a company in check and the two balance each other at the negotiating table.
Public sector unions negotiate against voters and tax payers. There is really no opposite force to resist against their negotiating power and the only hard line is the state budget.
100% agree with this. Yes government's can also abuse it's workers, but society can more easily vote out an abusive government (especially locally) than an abusive CEO / board. There's no perfect solution, but police unions are a pretty good example of a worst case scenario.
Nor do they somehow have contractural agreements with their cities that limit civilian oversight and require that possible crimes by members have to be handled as internal disciplinary issues first.
Structurally this means evidence gathered by internal investigations will often be destroyed and can't be used for possible criminal charges, as well as plenty of time to tighten up stories and close ranks with each other.
"On the spectrum of" is doing a lot of heavy lifting for you there. How many teachers have shot someone in their care this year? I'm guessing very few.
Also, "definitely not zero" is an absurd bar. "One teacher did something, better condemn all teachers!"
I hate how our society has just normalized people lying blatantly to our face and still giving the benefit of the doubt. It’s how you see a violent crowd breaking windows and beating people get called a peaceful tour.
Teachers don’t have state granted rights to commit violence. They also don’t have qualified immunity. The Supreme Court hasn’t decided they have no duty to protect.
A better comparison is, on a sliding scale, tsa or firefighters, emts. All can invade your privacy and take / destroy your things to a varying degree. You don't get to chose which fire gets you out of your car or which EMT does cpr on you.
Are you talking about being able to afford a private jet? If yes, then I would hardly call it a choice. I would definitely pick private, if I could, but I believe that most people (including me) just aren't able to afford it.
Otherwise, I have no idea what you are talking about. TSA Precheck still requires you to go through TSA security checkpoints, and you still gotta get all your items scanned and walk through the security gate (you just don't need to pull your laptop out of the bag and don't need to take off your shoes). And you still might get occasionally pulled to the side for an extra check because you got randomly picked (happened to me twice in the past few years).
Can you explain what you mean by that? Are you saying "You can just drive instead" or do you mean there is a way to fly within the US without going through the TSA?
That logic does apply to most/all state employee unions. Teachers, fire & rescue, etc.
But as others have pointed out, police unions are even worse in that the police uniquely are allowed to wield the power of the state with lethal force (military too, but until recently, we were supposed to be protected by Posse comitatus).
Teachers can weaponize CPS reports and absolutely cause legal problems. I know someone who dealt with that. Their kid's doctor put the kid on an ADHD medicine, he had a bad reaction to it, and then the doctor told the mother to immediately discontinue it.
The teacher was annoyed the kid was kind of disruptive and so filed a report that the mom had committed "medical neglect" for not giving her son the meds.
She had to take off work and deal with random CPS visits until they were satisfied.
This is a kid with good grades who can read multiple grade levels higher and who is most likely bored in class. I think he was in the first grade at the time
I don't know what the consequences of that are or could have been but it raised my eyebrows
Yeah, that's a great point, thanks for sharing. One time a teacher cut in line in front of me at the grocery store, so it seems like the real problem here is teachers having too much power.
This. Police routinely take away people's lives, either by shooting them needlessly, or using their power to fabricate charges or evidence against someone to ensure they spend their life in the criminal justice system.
Sure, that makes the case for reform stronger for police unions, but why should bad union behavior (ie. protecting criminal or incompetent members) be tolerated at all?
>Curtailing that freedom should be a measure of last resort.
This just feels like it turns into a cudgel against whatever groups you hate. Bad police unions? Boo! Let's ban them! Bad teacher unions? Free association is protected by the constitution so they get a pass. Catholic priests? On one hand they're consistently hated on by progressives, but on the other hand much of the arguments that can be used to defend them can be applied to teachers.
Safford Unified School District #1 v. Redding, 557 U.S. 364 (2009) (citing Thomas v. Roberts, 323 F.3d 950 (11th Cir. 2003)("This case involves a[n] ... action brought by thirteen elementary school students ... against Tracey Morgan, their teacher [and others].... [W]e affirm[] the district court's grant of qualified immunity to the individual defendants on the children's claims.")).
I know some kids who had a really bad time in school because some teachers treated them badly. Yes, it's not as bad as what the cops can do, but it was still pretty life altering.
are you seriously arguing that Teacher unions are just as bad? Teachers don't have the power to weild state sanctioned violence on you.
I mean, maybe you could argue about Fire Department Unions, (they can shut down events, force you from entering your home, etc) but then again, nobody has written a song called "Fuck the Fire Department"
Dude. If it weren't for unions, you would be working 70 hours each week for a shit pay and would even have less employee rights than you have not (assuming you live in the US, based on your dismissive comment against unions)
This logic absolutely should apply to all unions, including both police and teachers unions. You can find equally disgusting anecdotes of bad teachers who are protected by their unions, with students paying the price. You can tell a lot about whether someone has impartial judgement by seeing whether they consistently support/oppose both
I would think Police unions would probably gladly accept. higher pay for more accountability. It feels like accountability sheltering is a deal with the devil that cities made.
You've never negotiated with a union rep on anything, have you?
You pay every beat cop in the country $1 million/yr and they would never agree to the level of accountability most people expect. Independent review of actions by someone outside the chain of command? Unpaid leave when you're under investigation? At-will employment? Raises and promotions based on skill, not seniority? Random, immediate, and pass-fail physical, psychological, and marksmanship tests? Most of these seem completely reasonable to most people and if you said even one of them in a contract negotiation the first order of business by the union rep would be to remove you from contract negotiation.
>you said even one of them in a contract negotiation the first order of business by the union rep would be to remove you from contract negotiation.
You can do the same thing by saying "jury nullification" during the jury duty selection process. You can watch BOTH lawyers scramble to kick you out of the room.
Back in 2019 the police in Fresno stole a bunch of rare coins during a search of a house where the warrant did not cover anything like said coins, valued at $125,000, by reporting that they seized $50,000 when they actually took twice that much in cash and the coins. The 9th Circuit ended up deciding that while it was obviously morally wrong, qualified immunity applied because there's clearly established case law that stealing property that was specifically targeted for a search does violate the Constitution, because there's no analogous case regarding property stolen by police that the police did not know was there and are not covered by the warrant, there's no clearly established violation of the 4th Amendment even though it is literally an unlawful seizure of property. Supreme Court denied cert, allowing the decision to stand. I wish I was joking.
Despite how the USA barely pretends to be egalitarian, there is 100% an importance totem pole, with billionaires and businesses on the top, then politicians, the police, the military, religious leaders all somewhere in the middle in some order, and then the rest of the population on the very bottom. Any fight between these cohorts will be decided based on where they are on the totem pole, not based on the law, the Constitution, or what's right.
It's an AND. The union is why administrations can't get rid of the problem employees.
In Seattle, the police are "quiet quitting" (traffic ticketing is down 8x over ~10 years ago) and literally committing fraud and getting away with it (an officer on his second time falsely applying over 24 hours of work in a day, just had to return the pay for that week. There's STILL not computerized time tracking...)
Unions strike primarily for collective bargaining purposes.
They use the bargaining to set contract terms that restrict how people can be fired.
A union member who gets in trouble can leverage union resources and representation to protect themselves.
One of my family members did a term as a union rep. He was getting really frustrated with some of the little claims that union members wanted to use the union to protect themselves from, but it was part of the job. Fortunately for him there wasn’t a serious incident like this to deal with during his term.
No, but they go on strike when negotiating their collective contracts, and put terms in the contract that govern how failures like this are investigated and punished.
Apologies if I misread/misinterpreted you, but police can't (generally) strike in the USA. Most states have a specific laws against police and firefighters from going on strike. Federal law enforcement cannot strike
It's not legal, that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
See "Blue flu" for cases where cops coordinate a strike using sick leave. Another way they strike is by simply not doing their job. They'll just sit in their cars all day and won't respond or will severely delay response to dispatch.
AFAIK, those cops never get a ATF style house cleaning.
Police Unions engaged in collective action beyond striking to support other police who shoved a senior citizen to the ground and gave him brain damage, so stealing is nothing.
That's seemingly contradicted, or at least cast in doubt by your own article:
>The Buffalo police union, the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, was angered by the suspensions of the two officers, and it retaliated on June 5 by withdrawing its legal fees support for any other Buffalo officers for incidents related to the protests. [...] All 57 police officers from the Buffalo Police Department emergency response team resigned from the team, although they did not resign from the department.[45] According to the police union's president, the mass resignations were a show of solidarity with the two suspended officers.[46] However, his account has been contradicted by two of the resigned officers, who stated they resigned because of a lack of legal coverage. One of these officers said "many" of the 57 resigned officers did not resign to support the two suspended officers.[47]
Either the officers resigned in protest, or the union withdrew legal support in protest and the officers resigned as a result of that. Either way, the resignations were a result of union support for the criminals in their ranks.
That's a funny thing because, as with all absolutes, it's trivially easy to prove it wrong. All you need is _one_ cop to not be a bastard to prove it wrong.
Then you, like many others, misunderstand what the saying All Cops Are Bastards means. It's not an observation about the morality of each individual cop. It's shorthand for the fundamental corruption and injustice inherent to the institution of policing itself.
If Mother Theresa or Mister Rogers becomes a cop, ACAB isn't suddenly disproved, because it's not about specific individuals and their specific moral qualities. It's about systemic and fundamental problems with policing as a whole.
If you work alongside bastards, like civil-rights-violating bastards not chew-with-your-mouth-open bastards, and aren’t actively working to get them removed from the force - i’ve got bad news about your bastard status.
Which is the point of the saying. It’s not that all cops are individually bastardly, it’s that all cops are part of a system that both protects bastards regularly, and does systemically bastardly things (like say heavily policing crimes of poverty while ignoring crimes of wealth).
I'd have to go through a decent chunk of the dictionary before I started referring to people who chew with their mouth open as "bastards."
> systemically bastardly things (like say heavily policing crimes of poverty while ignoring crimes of wealth)
I'm the last person I would expect to be defending police, but I think if you look at the rate of physical and property violence perpetrated by "crimes of poverty" vs. "crimes of wealth" that might have a lot more to do with it than the cop trying to decide if the victim has money or not before they do anything.
We need to remove immunity for everyone. Cops, judges, politicians. Otherwise the most justice you get is taking money from taxpayers with a lawsuit, rather than from the corrupt people doing the crime.
And you'll end up with no reasonable person wanting to do those jobs becausr any day any bs complaint or lawsuit could cost you your livelihood, no thanks.
Doctors regularly have people's lives in their hands and if they make a significant mistake, they are liable. Not that the current state of medical malpractice law is exactly the gold standard, but that's an example of another approach to a similar situation. I do hear that some folks avoid the profession because of that, but I don't think that it's the case that "no reasonable person" wants to work in healthcare.
I don't think most reasonable people want police to be personally liable for every single thing they do, but neither do they want them to have broad and complete immunity from the law. The answer is somewhere in the middle, where police are protected in certain situations, but do still need to think about the consequences of their actions.
Plainly, we don’t have to pretend like there could be unforeseen consequences. This is a thing that exists in many jurisdictions and many societies around the world and we can see that many reasonable people become police officers in those societies.
Hence insurance on the individual. Kick in the wrong door and insurance covers it. Do it twice and suddenly the actuary sees an expensive and risky pattern.
And this is why most cops should be tarred with the brush of corruption - it isn’t that they broke the law, but too many are willing to cover up, defend and sweep under the rug those that do.
Engaging in a cover-up is in fact a crime. Recently a Massachusetts trooper who engaged in railroading a fabricated suspect was exposed for sending extreme racist, sexist, antisemitic texts to fellow troopers. But the names of those troopers and their own behavior remains opaque to the public. That's crazy!
Nobody should put up with that.
Even if it is a criminal offense, a prosecutor still has to bring charges. No prosecutor is ever bringing charges against a cop unless there is an absolute media frenzy that pushes it beyond the point it can be ignored.
Prosecutors need cops. Cops bring them cases. Cops testify in their cases. If they piss off the cops they can't do their job.
What really bothers me is how an independent investigator made a compelling case that identified a member of the DC metropolitan police as the suspect who placed a pipe bomb on Capitol grounds. Then after years of inactivity, the FBI suddenly broke the case and arrested a mentally unwell black kid.
The "compelling case" was all based on gait analysis which is heavily debunked and while making the case they quoted from reports about gait analysis but left out all the parts about it being an extremely inexact process prone to false matches.
There's a lot of junk "science" used in trials because there are plenty of "experts"[0] available to back it up for the prosecution and fewer funds to pay for the countervailing defense expert available to present the problems with it. Usually it takes a particularly bad case making it to a supreme or appeals court for that kind of evidence to be disallowed.
[0] The people paid to perform these analyses in the first place and then go testify convincingly for the prosecution about it but that's a whole separate rant.
>Recently a Massachusetts trooper who engaged in railroading a fabricated suspect was exposed for sending extreme racist, sexist, antisemitic texts to fellow troopers. But the names of those troopers and their own behavior remains opaque to the public. That's crazy! Nobody should put up with that.
What does sending "sending extreme racist, sexist, antisemitic texts to fellow troopers" have to do with cover-ups? Anyways my guess is that it's general policy for police/courts to not release evidence unless it's part of a trial, similar to how the Epstein files weren't released across 3 administrations and took an act of congress to get released.
So they railroaded a guy on some crap and the problem was the officers' dank memes groupchat?
This sort of character based BS is exactly the problem. The amount the victim got screwed is completely tangential to how upstanding the cops are/were. Justice is supposed to be blind. Punish them for their actual material conduct.
Given the anodyne content some folks will label “racist” and “sexist”, such claims ought be taken with a very healthy dose of skepticism.
Not that I have any idea what the content was in this case, but that’s the point. If you’re impugning someone’s character, you need to be a lot more specific than simply parroting vague moral accusations.
Sounds like you've got a lot invested in redefining "exposed for sending extreme racist, sexist, antisemitic texts to fellow troopers" as "anodyne" without any evidence.
Please give me an example of what you consider "anodyne extreme racist, sexist, antisemitic texts". Just because you agree with extreme racist, sexist, antisemitic texts and send stuff like that yourself as blithely as Trump tweets doesn't mean it's "anodyne".
The word you're looking for is "normalized", and that is the problem with today's society, not a justification for extreme racist, sexist, antisemitic texts.
This is, to a large extent, a US problem, because of the qualified immunity. Yet another cultural abomination that nearly doesn't exist anywhere else in the "developed" world.
The impact of qualified immunity is greatly exaggerated. All it means is that an officer can't be sued for performing their duties. They can still be sued for acts outside their authority. And more importantly, qualified immunity has nothing to say about criminal prosecution.
The real problem isn't the legal doctrine of qualified immunity, but the informal doctrine of "police don't get prosecuted for crimes, and if they are, they don't get convicted."
Police probably shouldn't be sued for performing their duties. But the issue is that with a few choice words (I feared for my safety/life) their "duties" cover a wide array of actions that a lot of citizens would argue it shouldn't.
Example: There are many cases of Cops stepping in front of a moving vehicle when confronting a suspect, which then is used as a reason to shoot and kill the suspect because "their life was in danger". But it's very easy to argue that the Cop put their own life in danger by stepping in front of the vehicle. IMO, that should not be covered by qualified immunity, and yet it usually is.
In this very article the police department argued that taking a laptop and not entering it into evidence is protected by qualified immunity. People think that qualified immunity applies to every story in the news because the police argue that it does and the courts typically agree. I will be interested to see the outcome of this case - my expectation is that the court will rule that the police officer cannot be personally sued in this case, because of qualified immunity.
Normal people are prosecuted for theft when they steal things like that. Qualified immunity doesn't cover that. This officer probably won't be prosecuted, but it's nothing to do with qualified immunity.
While in graduate school, the graduate student government had results from a student survey about their advisors. When presented with the results, nearly every administrator would give some response of "Well, it's really just a few bad apples," and we had to remind them every time of the actual meaning of the phrase!
But it’s not one bad apple. It’s one cop who stole someone’s laptop while arresting them and entire system that looked the other way and let the theft go unpunished.
This is the pension game. When the amount of your pension is determined by your last 3 years of compensation before retirement, you do everything you can to maximize overtime in those 3 years.
So people work as much as possible during that time and your peers are expected to make way for you to get as many hours as possible because it’s your turn.
One of many reasons why pensions are broken and going away. When the payout math was based on what people were typically paid but everyone plays games to double or triple it during the calculation window it breaks down.
Would be easy to fix by making it calculated over an entire career rather than the last 3 years, but when the people who make the rules also want their pension gamified you can’t get the rules changed.
Overtime is supposed to be a penalty to the employer for having unreasonable work hours. It shouldn't be something employees can willingly engage in to boost their take home pay. Especially when we are talking about cops and emergency services. I don't want to be working with a cop that has been on the clock for 80 hours.
It's a bit crazy that cities are paying so much extra for their police force because cops want a cushy retirement.
Officers may retire from the ISP with pension benefits under the following plans:
Tier 1
This information applies to individuals who became a member of SERS or a reciprocal system on or before December 31, 2010. The alternative formula applies to members in certain positions with 20 years of alternative service. Members eligible for the alternative formula may retire at age 50 with 25 years of service, or at age 55 with 20 years of service.
Tier 2
This information applies to individuals who became a member of SERS or a reciprocal system after December 31, 2010. The alternative formula applies to members in certain positions with 20 years of alternative service. Members eligible for the alternative formula may retire at age 55 with 20 years of service.
A maximum retirement benefit of 80% of ending salary is earned after 26 years and 8 months of creditable service.
It is not just troopers, it's a lot of IL state employees. Pay being ballooned in the final few years of service is just one of the many reasons the Illinois pension system is in crisis.
My grandpa retired as an IL police officer in his 50s and lived for 30+ more years making 6 figures from his pension and getting 3% or 5% (I forgot) adjustments every year. He probably had the most chill retirement of anybody I've ever known (outside of getting cancer twice). He was making six figures a year living on a lake near Dixon, you do not need six figures in Dixon lol
No it isn't. Schools are, and by a long way. People are confused by this because most municipalities have multiple taxing bodies; schools and municipalities work from different budgets, and the police are the largest line item in a budget that basically captures only police, fire, and public works.
>>> In a lot of municipalities the highest paid officials will be dominated by police.
>> And the police budget as a whole is often the top line item.
> No it isn't. Schools are, and by a long way.
Where I live municipalities do not run schools, rather it is the province. My municipality breaks out fire and paramedic separately.
Smaller municipalities or regions (~counties) may 'contract out' to the provincial (~state) police for a local detachment, but would have a line item for such payment.
Right. The point is that people fixate on the percentage of the budget "police" take up, but that budget is specialized. When a county, multi-muni school district, or state provides the schools, you're still paying taxes for it, they just don't show up in the same spreadsheet.
You almost always want to be looking at the total tax breakdown for your area, which will almost always include multiple taxing bodies. Where we are, "village" (police, fire, public works, permits, customer service), "township" (human services like elder care and youth programs), "library", "parks", "K8 schools", and "high school" are all separate taxing bodies, along with "county", "state", and... "water reclamation".
But if you just add everything up, police is something like 14% of the budget, and schools are over 2/3rds.
My mother and step-father were both state cops. They put in about 30 years each, but could have retired after 20 years in. They make more in retirement than my wife and I do. It pays quite well, but it comes with significant risks.
But fewer risks than people make it out to be. When people publish the lists of riskiest occupations based on health data, on the job injury data, etc police officers generally wind up around #20 +/-. Meanwhile there are occupations that are much lower paid ahead of them.
At least in my state the actually high risk portion of their job…dealing with traffic collisions on the highway…is being outsourced to non police “hero units”
Tells me we can change what police are and aren’t responsible for, and it is telling which ones they want to drop and which ones they don’t.
Incidentally, that's a big part of the argument behind "defund the police" (which is poorly named, at best). Instead of having police do everything, almost none of which they have any training in, and making any situation potentially lethal just by virtue of them having guns, there should be specialized units for their various responsibilities.
Where I live this has also created a secondary debate. Due to union laws, when these jobs are handed off to non-police, the municipality must still pay the prevailing wage, aka what the cops were getting paid.
Here it's required to have a police detail at every road based construction site. They get paid overtime to sit there playing candy crush in case maybe something happens requiring them to direct traffic. So it seems like a win-win to replace them with citizen flaggers as it'd remove the cops from that role but also drastically lower cost to the city. But no, it'd mean taking what should be a minimum wage job and paying someone $50-100+/hr to do it.
And then the secondary debate is that some people see this as a bad thing and others see it as a good thing.
There are lots of ways to quantify or record "risk"?
Risk of death?
Risk of injury? How much injury? I've had paper cuts recorded as workplace injuries, I've also had to get stitches after bleeding profusely, are both equally recorded as risk incidents?
What about the risk of getting shot? Just the risk, will I get shot today, has a physiological impact, is that risk recorded?
What about the risk of moral injury? The potential that you're hurt in your soul, because you failed, and someone got injured or hurt?
What about the risk of infectious disease or transmission from needles, blades or bodily fluids?
Police may be a safer job than forestry from a death risk, but there are many risks for police.
I am not sure why some people seem to hate the police so much that downplaying the risks police face. I used to sell drugs and the police were my adversary, but I don't hate them as much as people who have never been arrested. It's very strange. Who do the cop haters call when thieves are breaking into their home with guns?
> Who do the cop haters call when thieves are breaking into their home with guns?
For one thing it doesn't happen that much in the first place. In 2024 the rate was 229.4 per 100k in the USA [1] And yet this always gets cited as some reason to keep the police around. These sorts of threats that people cite are exceedingly rare, and yet used to fuel a vision of the world that's one of requiring constantly vigilance and paranoia.
In Toronto if you call the police because of armed home invasion, you’re connected to an AI that decides whether to escalate to a human operator. But if you do get connected they’re not going to show up anytime soon.
The advice given by Toronto police is to leave your car keys out by your front door so that armed home invaders can get what they came for with ease. The police don’t show up to protect you and your property. They also don’t want to risk their own safety around armed invaders.
What are the risks? Even among public employees I'd imagine firefighters are in dangerous situations more often. The data doesn't show that policing is an especially high-risk profession. EDIT: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48095469
The irony is that the municipalities that pay the most are typically the lowest risk. The most dangerous thing they will do is pull someone over on the side of the highway. Sure, not exactly safe, but also not exactly gunning it out with the bad guys.
Pizza delivery drivers face about twice as much risk of on the job injuries via violence when compared to cops. Also twice as much risk of fatal injuries. This mythos the US has with cops does not match reality.
Police aren't in the top 10 of most dangerous professions in the USA[1], and when they are injured, it's overwhelmingly the result of traffic accidents.
The saddest part is that I didn’t even blanche at that. At least here in New England, that kind of OT seems to be baked into the system, at least for senior officers. Just pulling regular construction duty can make a massive difference in income.
It's baked into the system on purpose. If city council doesn't want to raise police salaries too much, the union advocates for bylaws like ones requiring police officers doing traffic duty on large construction sites. Of course it's on the developer to pay for their hours, so the union gets their raise and the council gets to keep their budget in check. Everyone is happy.
Police and fire fighters have tons of opportunities for overtime. they get paid absurd amounts of money to do it. It’s another thing that badly needs reform.
Police budgets are completely out of control. Defenders will often quote base salaries and it's almost always intellectually dishonest. Overtime can 2-3x that base salary. It gets worse too because, depending on the police department, your pension is based on how much you earned your last year so people in their last year get to take all the OT.
And beyond that they're so awash with money that they're turning into paramilitary forces.
And on top of that we have a regime of legalized theft aka civil asset forfeiture. Often the police departments get to keep some or all of what they seize. They'll often get a cut of ticket revenue too such that cops will have quotas of tickets to write.
Combine the two and you end up with so-called "forfeiture corridors". You might find that drugs go one way but the cash goes the other and they'll only police the cash direction with excessive stops and tickets to seize as much acashn as they can get and then the burden is on you to prove the cash is not the proceeds of crime.
You say departments get to keep civil forfeiture proceeds, but the truth is individual officers often take that home. There are many cases of US police using civil forfeitures to buy themselves luxury items such as premium trucks for personal use, Super Bowl memorabilia, premium dog food for their pets at home (some actual examples). The money doesn’t just go back to police service funding.
Becoming that in the USA only requires 1 year of training AFAIK and a massive ego. Seems like one of the best options for someone who can't afford the "universities".
Exhibit A for why we need to rewrite sovereign immunity laws and get them out of union contracts, at the same time professionalizing how DUI is enforced. If we made the punishments like they have in Europe, the incidence would go way down.
This was incredibly dangerous of the victim. In another version of events, the officer could have shot him and plausibly (unfortunately) claimed the victim had a vendetta against the cop for arresting him.
At first I thought, "Wow, he's much braver than I am."
But "audacious" and "bold" are probably better words to describe it. Maybe I'm overly cautious, but it's inherently risky to confront someone who has taken your property since they have already shown a willingness to break the law. It's a coin toss whether they will perceive the confrontation as a threat and react violently.
All that without even considering that he was dealing with a police officer who, de facto, will be given the benefit of the doubt in a confrontation and may behave accordingly. Not all cops are bad, I think most are good actually, but you have no way of knowing which one you will get in a situation like this. I'm very glad that this ended well (as well as it could have) for him.
The way this is supposed to work is that the victim says "I got screwed into a baseless DUI and I'm only out a predatory tow bill and my $2k Mackbook. That's $3k less than the lawyer's starting price. Golly gee it's my lucky day"
He's not brave. He's dense enough to still believe in the system. See also: Knocking on the door of a cop who you've got beef with.
Yeah it’s a sad state. But it’s also not worth putting oneself in harm’s way. Report it to the state authorities (not all of them are crooked). Or try another jurisdiction, like the local police.
I used to spend a lot of time in forfeiture court in a past life, it's pretty wild. Most cases don't even make it to court. At least in Illinois they mail a notice to the person that says they have 14 days to file themselves in court if they want to challenge the forfeiture, and it specifically states on the form that the government will not help you in any way to file the required forms or supply them to you.
That's because field sobriety tests aren't designed to find out if people are actually impaired, they are designed to give cops a reason to arrest people purely on their own discretion even when they otherwise lack any evidence of wrongdoing. And in doing so it boosts both the local cops and court's funding through mandatory court fines and fees and programs when they hammer down on people too poor to afford a lawyer.
Same with polygraph tests. It's not admissible in court. It's an interrogation tactic designed to give some perceived authority to the police's claims that a suspect is lying and give the suspect a reason to talk more.
I don’t think this it’s worth being reported for asking for a source on this kind of claim. I would argue of a middle ground though. I think field tests origins came from a good intent of trying to distinguish intoxicated drivers but has morphed over the years and used to give reason to search your belongings. I think the original post is wrong, the intent is not to arrest people but they are commonly used as a means to get cause to search your vehicle.
And I don’t have a source, so it’s anecdotal but one of those things where you read enough of these cases and even see how cops are trained that the intent for most stops unrelated to genuine traffic violations is to get cause to search the vehicle.
I think back to some of those corridors within the United States where law enforcement abuse cash forfeiture laws to take peoples money.
I recall that a lawyer who talked about how they were developed and explained how they work, came to that conclusion. The tests are completely subjective, and the way they are graded means that unless you are an Olympic-level athlete, you will fail it. Can you balance on one foot without swaying or puting the other foot down (even when you first start and find your balance), with your eyes closed, for one minute?
Might I suggest that you research it and post what you find.
So whats the solution? 37 people die every day in a crash involving an alcohol impaired driver. Do we think if we inhibit the police's ability to arrest drunk drivers, the world will be a better place? People are clearly not going to stop drinking and driving.
I am neither left nor right, but I feel like I need to say this much more in spaces that heavily lean left -- I wish we would focus on the actual crimes the police are there to stop as much as we do the police reform.
Two things can be true:
- police should enforce the law to reduce or address crime or infractions
- police should have a standard of enforcement that corresponds with the way the court system should operate, which is that the state carries the burden of proving the crime
The right to demand a blood test or other mechanism of having the state own the burden of proof might be inconvenient but it's integral to a fairly operating system, just like the right to demand a lawyer or representation.
> I wish we would focus on the actual crimes the police are there to stop as much as we do the police reform.
Having criminal police is possibly worse than having no police. "First, do no harm" right?
I have tremendous respect for the work that good police do. I support laws that have higher penalties for crimes against police and other public workers. But respect is a two-way street. I also support higher penalties for crimes committed by police and other public workers.
The police aren't stopping the crime, therefore the police need to be reformed.
And note that “involving” is very much not the same thing as “caused by”. Yes, “caused by” will be a big chunk of it, but there's a reason the latter term is not used.
> inhibit the police's ability to arrest drunk drivers
They have breathalyzers and blood tests. Field sobriety tests are not there to help police arrest drunk drivers, they're there to help police arrest whomever they want to.
> I wish we would focus on the actual crimes the police are there to stop as much as we do the police reform.
The U.S. is one of the most punishment-happy countries in the world. Nearly every politician vows to be "tough on crime". This is an incredible thing to say given the past 50 years of policing and justice in the U.S. Won't somebody please think of the children!?
> I am neither left nor right
The "center" is constantly moving and has been, on average, shifting far to the right over the last 20 years. Anyone who claims to be a centrist is therefore either changing their politics with the wind, or was far right all along.
> They have breathalyzers and blood tests. Field sobriety tests are not there to help police arrest drunk drivers, they're there to help police arrest whomever they want to.
You're wrong about that. "Sobriety" isn't limited to alcohol. You'll notice that most laws against drunk driving are actually against being "intoxicated" or "impaired". Breathalyzers and blood tests are for gathering indisputable evidence.
Field sobriety tests are there to determine if you're motor skills are impaired. If an officer observers a person driving erratically and they can't walk a straight line or touch their own nose, they shouldn't be driving. You can be arrested for DUI [of sleeping pills].
The only time police would specify a DUI was for alcohol is if a breathalyzer or blood test showed that. Even if the officer says there was a beer can on the floor and they smelled like alcohol, they could be under the legal limit and be on any number of other substances so the DUI wouldn't specify alcohol.
> If an officer observers a person driving erratically and they can't walk a straight line or touch their own nose, they shouldn't be driving.
There are plenty of reasons that someone might not be able to demonstrate this to the subjective opinion of an officer and be completely unimpaired and competent at driving. e.g. people with atypical minds or bodies
Police generally ask people to do these tests when they have already made up their mind about someone being impaired. The only point of the test, practically, is generate standardized documentation. It is a dog and pony show.
Other countries that have serious anti-driving-impairment programs don't use these types of subjective tests -- they test people for using the substances directly.
They'll have an opportunity to prove that in court. I know that's not a great solution (because of the penalties involved in simply being accused of a crime, but that's a different issue) but, remember, they were pulled over for driving erratically and the, through conversation, the officer would gain further reason to ask them to do the test. The problem is the driving, everything after that is evidence gathering.
These days, so much of that will be recorded on video, from the dash cam to the body cam, it's usually cut and dry that the person accused is under the influence of something.
> people with atypical minds or bodies
This is a reasonable concern so I don't want to dismiss it but this isn't even close to the typical situation and, to emphasize, the reason for the stop is usually bad driving and the officer is looking for an explanation. Before a sobriety test is administered, there is already a cause for being pulled over. So people who can't pass a sobriety test because they have a physical or mental reason they can't only have that one piece of evidence against them removed.
I'm sure you can construct a hypothetical case where a person with a speech impairment, an inner ear deformaty and who's eyes shake when moving left and right gets arrested for DUI because they appear impaired but they weren't pulled over for those reasons.
The problem is that low-quality evidence causes both type 1 and type 2 errors.
Not only does it cause significant problems for people who are unjustly jailed and charged for crimes they didn't commit -- but it also lets drunk drivers off the hook when the flimsy evidence fails to convict. These aren't hypotheticals, both are very common.
Police in the US simply need to be equipped with roadside chemical tests for substances. They exist, they just simply don't use them.
> The officer takes a sample of your saliva by placing an absorbent collector in the mouth or on the tongue. The sample is then analysed at the roadside. If the test is positive, it must be confirmed by laboratory testing before charges can be laid.
Doesn't that sound like a better solution than: "The officer makes you stand on one leg and say the alphabet backwards, if they don't like they way you did it, you are charged with DUI"?
> I'm sure you can construct a hypothetical case where a person with a speech impairment, an inner ear deformaty and who's eyes shake when moving left and right gets arrested for DUI because they appear impaired but they weren't pulled over for those reasons.
The more common, and even more scary issue, is that sometimes people undergoing medical emergencies are arrested for DUI and sent to jail instead of a hospital. Which is again another situation that would be avoided entirely by roadside testing. This is such a common issue for diabetics that police normally do train to recognize the difference, but since they are not medical professionals and don't have adequate equipment, they still often confuse the two.
Violent crime like being robbed of your laptop at gunpoint is precisely one of those crimes "police are there to stop". And yet here we have someone who is being entrusted and paid by the public to stop that crime, creating more of that crime, and then using their privileged position to avoid accountability!
To support the societal belief in law and order, it is much more important to punish the meta issues where the government is itself causing harm. It's not that there should magically be no crime committed by police officers. But rather every single crime should be investigated and prosecuted to the utmost extent.
"People are clearly not going to stop drinking and driving" is such a strange statement to make in defense of DUI stops. Doesn't that imply that DUI stops don't help matters?
At any rate, the solution is to fire all of the corrupt cops and strictly enforce ethical and legal rules. Everything considered to be evidence needs to have an actual scientific basis for it. No more arresting people for being drunk because an officer with three months of training is considered to be an expert judge in impairment. Officers caught lying about the basis for an arrest should be imprisoned. Enforce the law, but do it in both directions.
You can. Refusing the field test allows them to arrest you. But it isn't sufficient to charge you. They also have to offer you a breathalyzer at the station and you can refuse that but demand a blood test.
But your car still gets towed even if you pass the tests at the station and don't ultimately get charged because you refused the field test.
A field sobriety test is distinct from a chemical analysis (breathalyzer or otherwise).
In California, you are required to submit to chemical testing (breath, urine, or blood — I don’t recall the rules for which applies in which situations). However, you are not required to otherwise talk to or perform the absurd procedure of the field sobriety test (“you have the right to remain silent”).
I was under the mistaken impression you could refuse and then would get a blood test, seems that was wrong/out-dated (also wrong!). The backup test at the station is also usually a breath test apparently. And it seems we have field sobriety tests but it looks like they're for drug-driving.
It's also an offense in most (all?) of the US. Even then, if someone is pulled over for DUI, at that point the officers are just collecting evidence. If someone has had anything to drink, it's in their best interest to say they want a lawyer and refuse all tests. Then there will be less evidence to argue against in court.
I would love to be corrected, but I was under the impression if you refused any testing, your driving license will be revoked. Drivers license is a privilege, not a right.
Sure, but it's typically less than a DUI conviction and doesn't show up on your record as a DUI and you can avoid insurance increases.
If the police decide to have you exit the car and do the field tests, the odds are high they have already decided to arrest you. At that point, it's best to refuse all unless you have had absolutely zero drugs/alcohol. And then the question has to be why did they have you get out the car.
Depends on the state. Illinois refusal of everything is typically a 3 month suspension. But if you are guilty that is better than submitting to evidence that gets it suspended for 6 months+. If you are innocent, it is in your interest to pass the test.
I don't understand how simple DWI testing is like that in your country. 3 seconds of a certified calibrated breathalyzer is sufficient, this walking in a straight line and saying the alphabet backwards sounds like a joke.
As others have said the intent is not to document sobriety but to have a subjective reason for an arrest which looks good in the scorecard.
Look for “if cops say I smell
Alcohol, say these words” on YouTube, gives you tips on how to respond if asked about alcohol use or doing a sobriety test.
I am curious about these 'smell' comments, or at least how you're supposed to react to it. The last time I got pulled over, the cop commented multiple times that something smelled like marijuana, and he asked if I had been smoking or had friends that smoked.
I said I hadn't and didn't know anybody who did. It's true that I don't and had not been around any and there's no way my car smelled like drugs. I think I was on the verge of heat stroke and basically didn't respond with any level of stress to anything he said. I was being pulled over for driving without a seatbelt, which I almost never do, but it was 95 degrees and my AC was broken and I couldn't bring myself to put my back against the chair (plus I was in the middle of nowhere).
Another cop also showed up reasonlessly to hang around behind the other one with his lights on after awhile (I'd pulled into a gas station), which I think was also supposed to freak me out. I ended up excusing myself to go stand in the gas station to cool down and when I came back they were gone
How to react to it is exactly what that video covers. Basically - don’t try to explain/justify it. It could be anything - maybe you drove through a cloud of pot smoke? Who knows. The advice from the video is to say you exercise your right not to discuss what you ate or smoked and ask if you’re detained or free to go.
I rather use a lawyer for legal advice than YouTube. There is a lot of sovereign citizen "you don't need a license to drive" "legal advice" on YouTube too.
Oh for sure. Have you asked your lawyer what to say if they pull you over and falsely claim to smell alcohol / drugs or want you to take a bogus sobriety test? If so, care to share? With the full understanding YANAL.
There are other forms of intoxication beyond alcohol. A device that measures your blood alcohol percentage does nothing for the driver who is half asleep from valium. A field sobriety test is more of an indicator of whether you are capable of operating a vehicle safely than of having a high alcohol intake recently. If you can't perform simple tasks, you probably shouldn't be operating a vehicle regardless of the cause.
The portable breathalyzer is inadmissable in court in my and most states. The Simon Says game is though (but it can be refused without penalty, hypothetically).
Why would a certified calibrated breathalizer test be inadmissible in court? How is it any different from catching speeders with a laser gun, or doing a DNA test?
And if giving every cop a calibrated breathalizer is too expensive: give them a reasonably-accurate one for in the field, then take everyone who fails it to the station for a retest on an expensive calibrated one.
This is changing. Most states have “permanent” properly calibrated breathalyzer at every dui checkpoint now. And in an increasing number of regular vehicles
He refused a blood test as was his right, and probably the correct decision given that this "top cop" (ie, the one they say had by far the most DUI arrests) was a criminal and shown to break the evidence chain of custody.
From the article it says the officer has to appear in court for each DUI arrest...which leads to overtime pay. The officer made 319 DUI arrests of which 174 cases were dismissed. The more arrests, the more overtime pay so there's an incentive to arrest people even if they are not drunk. This is how he's making $250K.
The less you have to buy, the more money you have. Or the more stolen goods you sell, the more money you have. Or the more stolen goods you can give to others, the more goodwill you can get with them and possibly favors which can save you money elsewhere.
For every DUI arrest made, state police troopers must appear in court, and in evidence motions filed with the court, attorneys have said this has led to a staggering amount of overtime pay for Trooper Bradley.
State records show in 2024, Bradley nearly tripled his salary, earning nearly $250,000 in one year."
Are you implying there's a link between having money and being immune to corruption? In the US, just look at the federal government or titans of industry, like Elon Musk.
Just HOW many stories of civil asset forfeiture, blatant theft, assault, murder, and everything do we need to see that policing in this country is a criminal gang backed by government?
And even for simpler crap that everyone gets hit by, is speed limit laws. You can be pulled over for even 1mph over 'limit'. And more gross, is that its not a safety issue, but a revenue enhancement issue. Its a way they can steal legally, AND fish for more things to screw you over with.
And naturally, any thing these pigs do "in the operation of policing" makes them immune, for <handwaving magical> reasons.
All Cops Are Basterds, nothing asinine about pointing out normalized system of corruption. The cops across the country can stop protecting their bad actors then then the public will stop calling them basterds. They did this to themselves.
To be a bit pedantic, its not sovereign immunity, its qualified immunity. It is defeatable, and there are examples of it, but its rather rare. It is an abused and obviously problematic legal doctrine
According to the Wikipedia article on sovereign immunity, there are two types: "absolute immunity" and "qualified immunity". If that's right (I have no idea) then they're not incompatible.
Sovereign immunity is the more general problem. The media focuses on qualified immunity because it's the specific justification that is often used for invoking sovereign immunity. But really we need to significantly neuter that base concept of sovereign immunity. First, it's a large part of what causes individual officers to think "they are the law" and go down the path of criminality we have here. But in general it's also what allows police forces, congruent with all their rules and procedures, to harm innocent citizens and then never make them whole for that harm. "You can beat the rap but you can't beat the ride" isn't some clever insight, rather it's a grave subversion of justice.
ICE itself as a federal agency has sovereign immunity but the individuals who make up ICE only have qualified immunity for constitutional rights violations. However they do have sovereign immunity for general torts (or more technically for general torts the USG is substituted as the defendant and the USG has sovereign immunity.
>In court filings, attorneys representing the state and Bradley have argued Holland's lawsuit should be dismissed as the trooper has "sovereign immunity" as a member of law enforcement, and that it was a "lawful" traffic stop.
Huh, interesting. I am very dubious of that quote. IANAL, but I'm pretty sure if they actually filed that in court they would be laughed out of the room. My guess is either the reporters got it wrong or its some AI hallucination. Unfortunately they don't source this claim.
So police in african countries are poorly paid so it's OK for them to just...rob people? Wouldn't it make more sense to just pay the police better? Is it OK for a waitress or a teacher or a taxi driver to steal your wallet? They're also underpaid...
That bit of justification seems absolutely bananas to me.
I've been saying this for awhile as well. Corruption is horse-shoe, once it is pervasive enough, it becomes affordable to the common man and not just the rich. Counter-intuitively, even more egalitarian, perhaps.
Ive had police in Mexico just walk up and steal $100+ from my wallet. It was refreshing as in the US they instead police have just dragged me to jail on fabricated allegations. When Mexican police can get all they want by just stealing my money and not my time, it feels like living in a more free country, liberating comparatively.
I was billed about $1000 when US police took me to ER in cuffs and claimed (made up) I was secretly smuggling drugs up my ass.
------- re: below (throttled) ----------
They got a warrant afterwards which they somehow applied retroactively. I found out police had systematically been doing this to people and in fact already sued for this. The hospital had also already been put on notice after ACLU sued in a different state.
I contacted several lawyers and the ACLU (since they already had posted notice for this same thing). ACLU was radio silence for the entire couple years of the statue of limitations, so no help there. The best shot I had was contacting a couple lawyers who specifically sued against the same people who had done it before. They lost the last time due to the courts considering the hospital as effectively deputized as federal officers while it happened. The courts/state got around the lawsuit by claiming it is medical care whenever the warrant issue come up, then claim it is a LEO search whenever the medical aspects of the search were challenged, creating a catch 22.
All lawyers involved told me they'd given up such cases (impossible to win). The prior, almost identical but even worse case (woman finger-raped by doctors without a warrant) was lost due to the catch-22 of it being a "search" whenever the medical aspects were challenged and being "medical care" whenever the search aspects were challenged. This meant it was effectively impossible to challenge it from any available angle.
As for the bill, I never paid it. Still chased by debt collectors for it though.
Basically if federal officers involved you are fucked. Lon Horiuchi straight up sniped an innocent woman holding a baby in her arms, over a husband's failure to appear in court, and even he couldn't be held accountable.
They (the cops) can't force a hospital to do anything without a warrant. Sue the hospital & police; if you can't afford a lawyer, take whoever billed you to small claims to get your money back.
The medical personnel waited to sign the charts until right after the ink went on the warrant (I requested the paperwork and the time at which the entries went in betrayed them though, the clever bastards wrote it hours earlier but then waited until the warrant was signed to actually sign it). Then as soon as the warrant was served, the hospital administration told everyone to GTFO. Their coverup was comically obvious. But since I was innocent and never charged, I never had the occasion to challenge the warrant.
As I mentioned, the same hospital system had been sued before for this same thing though and the hospital/officers won, even without a warrant. As long as you're innocent you can't do much about it since the civil suites lose and you won't be in criminal court where you can probably squash the evidence.
It’s an interesting aside in the story but if you’re under investigation for a DUI you can just refuse the field sobriety tests and it appears they don’t follow up so you’ll be declared innocent even if you were arrested for felony DUI.
Assuming the best case version of this guy’s story he arrested this guy for the DUI and then forgot to check in his wallet, key, and laptop or whatever. Fine, not unbelievable. But it doesn’t look like he followed up about the DUI thing.
> It’s an interesting aside in the story but if you’re under investigation for a DUI you can just refuse the field sobriety tests and it appears they don’t follow up so you’ll be declared innocent even if you were arrested for felony DUI.
I assume it varies but for most places if you refuse roadside field sobriety tests and they feel you have given indicators of impairment they will take you into custody. Then they'll take you to the station and give you the option of taking a breathalyzer and if you refuse again your license is automatically suspended for a year.
In my state they can get a judge to issue a blood draw warrant. I learned this because I was on the jury of a DUI case and the arresting officer said he didn't want to bother a judge so opted not to get a warrant after the driver refused the tests and breathalyzer. The prosecutor only presented "this cop is good!, he has 100s of DUI stops, trust him!". We acquitted due to lack of evidence.
The whole subtext here is that the cop's self-serving misconduct comes at the expense of the system.
The cop got a free laptop so of course the ball got dropped. The point is he they didn't want it dragged through court where that could be easily uncovered so he just dropped the ball. $5k+ lawyer fees minimum if they decide to prosecute the DUI vs $2k at best laptop. The math is supposed easy for the accused.
So then this guy goes and gets the GPS info, confronts the cop, it spirals, whole thing comes crashing down.
And now the state is going after this cop because he's at the very least implicitly making DUI enforcement look bad.
> At the gas station, Bradley accused Holland of driving under the influence. When asked if he would submit to field sobriety tests, Holland calmly refused.
Much as I hope Bradley would be fired and lose his pension for abuse of power, this part is on Holland. In my state, refusing a breathalyzer is by law an automatic penalty because of the "implied consent statute" that you accept when you get behind the wheel: automatic license suspension for 1 year, and you still have to face the officer's testimony. There are consequences to the refusal that have nothing to do with the officer.
You're confusing a breathalyzer with a field sobriety test, the latter of which no one should agree to. It's the sort of test that asks you to walk straight, hop on one leg, allow an officer to use a flashlight on your eyes, or recite the alphabet backwards. They're designed to allow the officer to use their discretion to determine if you've failed rather than use an objective reading (like a breathalyzer).
Ask yourself why an officer would want to use a set of tests that require being subjective instead of deferring to a breathalyzer.
Incorrect. Field sobriety test like walking a straight line or doing those bizarre tests can be difficult for those who haven't been drinking. Now if he refused a breathalyzer or blood sample and he was sober, that's the wrong move. If he refused a breathalyzer or blood sample AND he was NOT sober, that's the correct move. It's far cheaper to take the one year license suspension than get a DUI and deal with all of those issues. This has nothing to do with the officer, but protecting yourself.
Almost never lose their pensions. The cops I know in Illinois who all did bad shit and were investigated for it were all given the chance to resign to keep their pensions.
This is not true in Illinois. Field sobriety tests before you are arrested are entirely voluntary and you can refuse them without triggering implied consent penalties.
>No. Field sobriety tests are not mandatory in Illinois. A driver may legally refuse to participate in field sobriety testing without violating Illinois law. These roadside tests are voluntary and are not part of the State’s implied consent laws.
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In the private sector the incentives are mostly aligned for producing reasonable deals, because both sides rely on the business being healthy and making a profit and the jobs fundamentally rely on that.
In the public sector they aren't aligned. The politician is most incentivized to avoid immediate political turmoil. Voters are not market analysts who recognize and have a problem with deals that produce massive costs in the long-run (ex: exceptionally young or exceptionally generous retirement). The union is often aware it can extort the public with the threat of causing chaos. Government can raise taxes/take on heavier debt, which further weakens it's negotiating position - in all but the most extreme cases it won't be going into bankruptcy or ceasing to exist, taxpayers in 30 years will just be on the hook for paying a bad deal made by a previous generation.
The argument for a union is that they keep a company in check and the two balance each other at the negotiating table.
Public sector unions negotiate against voters and tax payers. There is really no opposite force to resist against their negotiating power and the only hard line is the state budget.
I'm very pro union in the private sector.
Structurally this means evidence gathered by internal investigations will often be destroyed and can't be used for possible criminal charges, as well as plenty of time to tighten up stories and close ranks with each other.
Also, probably for obvious reasons military unions are strictly prohibited by federal law for active-duty personnel [1].
[1]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/976
Also, "definitely not zero" is an absurd bar. "One teacher did something, better condemn all teachers!"
I hate how our society has just normalized people lying blatantly to our face and still giving the benefit of the doubt. It’s how you see a violent crowd breaking windows and beating people get called a peaceful tour.
You’re talking apples and donkeys.
Otherwise, I have no idea what you are talking about. TSA Precheck still requires you to go through TSA security checkpoints, and you still gotta get all your items scanned and walk through the security gate (you just don't need to pull your laptop out of the bag and don't need to take off your shoes). And you still might get occasionally pulled to the side for an extra check because you got randomly picked (happened to me twice in the past few years).
But as others have pointed out, police unions are even worse in that the police uniquely are allowed to wield the power of the state with lethal force (military too, but until recently, we were supposed to be protected by Posse comitatus).
For public sector unions, it absolutely does.
Teachers and administrative staff are workers. They need workers unions.
The teacher was annoyed the kid was kind of disruptive and so filed a report that the mom had committed "medical neglect" for not giving her son the meds.
She had to take off work and deal with random CPS visits until they were satisfied.
This is a kid with good grades who can read multiple grade levels higher and who is most likely bored in class. I think he was in the first grade at the time
I don't know what the consequences of that are or could have been but it raised my eyebrows
This just feels like it turns into a cudgel against whatever groups you hate. Bad police unions? Boo! Let's ban them! Bad teacher unions? Free association is protected by the constitution so they get a pass. Catholic priests? On one hand they're consistently hated on by progressives, but on the other hand much of the arguments that can be used to defend them can be applied to teachers.
Safford Unified School District #1 v. Redding, 557 U.S. 364 (2009) (citing Thomas v. Roberts, 323 F.3d 950 (11th Cir. 2003)("This case involves a[n] ... action brought by thirteen elementary school students ... against Tracey Morgan, their teacher [and others].... [W]e affirm[] the district court's grant of qualified immunity to the individual defendants on the children's claims.")).
Anyone with "inspector" in their title is just an abstraction layer above the cops and courts.
I mean, maybe you could argue about Fire Department Unions, (they can shut down events, force you from entering your home, etc) but then again, nobody has written a song called "Fuck the Fire Department"
You pay every beat cop in the country $1 million/yr and they would never agree to the level of accountability most people expect. Independent review of actions by someone outside the chain of command? Unpaid leave when you're under investigation? At-will employment? Raises and promotions based on skill, not seniority? Random, immediate, and pass-fail physical, psychological, and marksmanship tests? Most of these seem completely reasonable to most people and if you said even one of them in a contract negotiation the first order of business by the union rep would be to remove you from contract negotiation.
You can do the same thing by saying "jury nullification" during the jury duty selection process. You can watch BOTH lawyers scramble to kick you out of the room.
If so, then I think you've got police problems, not police unions problems.
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/17...
In Seattle, the police are "quiet quitting" (traffic ticketing is down 8x over ~10 years ago) and literally committing fraud and getting away with it (an officer on his second time falsely applying over 24 hours of work in a day, just had to return the pay for that week. There's STILL not computerized time tracking...)
They use the bargaining to set contract terms that restrict how people can be fired.
A union member who gets in trouble can leverage union resources and representation to protect themselves.
One of my family members did a term as a union rep. He was getting really frustrated with some of the little claims that union members wanted to use the union to protect themselves from, but it was part of the job. Fortunately for him there wasn’t a serious incident like this to deal with during his term.
edit: a source (I assume lawyers.com is reputable..) https://legal-info.lawyers.com/labor-employment-law/wage-and...
See "Blue flu" for cases where cops coordinate a strike using sick leave. Another way they strike is by simply not doing their job. They'll just sit in their cars all day and won't respond or will severely delay response to dispatch.
AFAIK, those cops never get a ATF style house cleaning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_police_shoving_inciden...
>The Buffalo police union, the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association, was angered by the suspensions of the two officers, and it retaliated on June 5 by withdrawing its legal fees support for any other Buffalo officers for incidents related to the protests. [...] All 57 police officers from the Buffalo Police Department emergency response team resigned from the team, although they did not resign from the department.[45] According to the police union's president, the mass resignations were a show of solidarity with the two suspended officers.[46] However, his account has been contradicted by two of the resigned officers, who stated they resigned because of a lack of legal coverage. One of these officers said "many" of the 57 resigned officers did not resign to support the two suspended officers.[47]
I've known several non-bastard cops.
If Mother Theresa or Mister Rogers becomes a cop, ACAB isn't suddenly disproved, because it's not about specific individuals and their specific moral qualities. It's about systemic and fundamental problems with policing as a whole.
See how ACAB is a lot easier to say?
Which is the point of the saying. It’s not that all cops are individually bastardly, it’s that all cops are part of a system that both protects bastards regularly, and does systemically bastardly things (like say heavily policing crimes of poverty while ignoring crimes of wealth).
> systemically bastardly things (like say heavily policing crimes of poverty while ignoring crimes of wealth)
I'm the last person I would expect to be defending police, but I think if you look at the rate of physical and property violence perpetrated by "crimes of poverty" vs. "crimes of wealth" that might have a lot more to do with it than the cop trying to decide if the victim has money or not before they do anything.
I don't think most reasonable people want police to be personally liable for every single thing they do, but neither do they want them to have broad and complete immunity from the law. The answer is somewhere in the middle, where police are protected in certain situations, but do still need to think about the consequences of their actions.
Prosecutors need cops. Cops bring them cases. Cops testify in their cases. If they piss off the cops they can't do their job.
The whole apparatus is shameful.
Just kind of displays the. corruption and duplicity of the US legal system.
[0] The people paid to perform these analyses in the first place and then go testify convincingly for the prosecution about it but that's a whole separate rant.
What does sending "sending extreme racist, sexist, antisemitic texts to fellow troopers" have to do with cover-ups? Anyways my guess is that it's general policy for police/courts to not release evidence unless it's part of a trial, similar to how the Epstein files weren't released across 3 administrations and took an act of congress to get released.
I guess?
I mean you go ahead and call that a release.
If it brings you comfort.
The US government is just corrupt from tip to tail. Why everyone continuously acts surprised about these things is genuinely a mystery?
This sort of character based BS is exactly the problem. The amount the victim got screwed is completely tangential to how upstanding the cops are/were. Justice is supposed to be blind. Punish them for their actual material conduct.
Are you saying people need to put up with racist POS cops?
Not that I have any idea what the content was in this case, but that’s the point. If you’re impugning someone’s character, you need to be a lot more specific than simply parroting vague moral accusations.
Please give me an example of what you consider "anodyne extreme racist, sexist, antisemitic texts". Just because you agree with extreme racist, sexist, antisemitic texts and send stuff like that yourself as blithely as Trump tweets doesn't mean it's "anodyne".
The word you're looking for is "normalized", and that is the problem with today's society, not a justification for extreme racist, sexist, antisemitic texts.
The real problem isn't the legal doctrine of qualified immunity, but the informal doctrine of "police don't get prosecuted for crimes, and if they are, they don't get convicted."
Police probably shouldn't be sued for performing their duties. But the issue is that with a few choice words (I feared for my safety/life) their "duties" cover a wide array of actions that a lot of citizens would argue it shouldn't.
Example: There are many cases of Cops stepping in front of a moving vehicle when confronting a suspect, which then is used as a reason to shoot and kill the suspect because "their life was in danger". But it's very easy to argue that the Cop put their own life in danger by stepping in front of the vehicle. IMO, that should not be covered by qualified immunity, and yet it usually is.
Qualified immunity also applies to the officer who individually. The department can be sued still.
All pigs are corrupt. They should all be gotten rid of with as an across-the-country RICO act as a criminal organization.
Holy cow.
So people work as much as possible during that time and your peers are expected to make way for you to get as many hours as possible because it’s your turn.
One of many reasons why pensions are broken and going away. When the payout math was based on what people were typically paid but everyone plays games to double or triple it during the calculation window it breaks down.
Would be easy to fix by making it calculated over an entire career rather than the last 3 years, but when the people who make the rules also want their pension gamified you can’t get the rules changed.
So instead they’re just going away for everyone.
Overtime is supposed to be a penalty to the employer for having unreasonable work hours. It shouldn't be something employees can willingly engage in to boost their take home pay. Especially when we are talking about cops and emergency services. I don't want to be working with a cop that has been on the clock for 80 hours.
It's a bit crazy that cities are paying so much extra for their police force because cops want a cushy retirement.
From https://isp.illinois.gov/JoinIsp/BecomeATrooper:
Officers may retire from the ISP with pension benefits under the following plans: Tier 1 This information applies to individuals who became a member of SERS or a reciprocal system on or before December 31, 2010. The alternative formula applies to members in certain positions with 20 years of alternative service. Members eligible for the alternative formula may retire at age 50 with 25 years of service, or at age 55 with 20 years of service.
Tier 2 This information applies to individuals who became a member of SERS or a reciprocal system after December 31, 2010. The alternative formula applies to members in certain positions with 20 years of alternative service. Members eligible for the alternative formula may retire at age 55 with 20 years of service.
A maximum retirement benefit of 80% of ending salary is earned after 26 years and 8 months of creditable service.
>> And the police budget as a whole is often the top line item.
> No it isn't. Schools are, and by a long way.
Where I live municipalities do not run schools, rather it is the province. My municipality breaks out fire and paramedic separately.
Smaller municipalities or regions (~counties) may 'contract out' to the provincial (~state) police for a local detachment, but would have a line item for such payment.
You almost always want to be looking at the total tax breakdown for your area, which will almost always include multiple taxing bodies. Where we are, "village" (police, fire, public works, permits, customer service), "township" (human services like elder care and youth programs), "library", "parks", "K8 schools", and "high school" are all separate taxing bodies, along with "county", "state", and... "water reclamation".
But if you just add everything up, police is something like 14% of the budget, and schools are over 2/3rds.
But fewer risks than people make it out to be. When people publish the lists of riskiest occupations based on health data, on the job injury data, etc police officers generally wind up around #20 +/-. Meanwhile there are occupations that are much lower paid ahead of them.
Tells me we can change what police are and aren’t responsible for, and it is telling which ones they want to drop and which ones they don’t.
Here it's required to have a police detail at every road based construction site. They get paid overtime to sit there playing candy crush in case maybe something happens requiring them to direct traffic. So it seems like a win-win to replace them with citizen flaggers as it'd remove the cops from that role but also drastically lower cost to the city. But no, it'd mean taking what should be a minimum wage job and paying someone $50-100+/hr to do it.
And then the secondary debate is that some people see this as a bad thing and others see it as a good thing.
Looking there all that are riskier on deaths either have much lower education requirements, or also pay well.
Risk of death?
Risk of injury? How much injury? I've had paper cuts recorded as workplace injuries, I've also had to get stitches after bleeding profusely, are both equally recorded as risk incidents?
What about the risk of getting shot? Just the risk, will I get shot today, has a physiological impact, is that risk recorded?
What about the risk of moral injury? The potential that you're hurt in your soul, because you failed, and someone got injured or hurt?
What about the risk of infectious disease or transmission from needles, blades or bodily fluids?
Police may be a safer job than forestry from a death risk, but there are many risks for police.
I am not sure why some people seem to hate the police so much that downplaying the risks police face. I used to sell drugs and the police were my adversary, but I don't hate them as much as people who have never been arrested. It's very strange. Who do the cop haters call when thieves are breaking into their home with guns?
For one thing it doesn't happen that much in the first place. In 2024 the rate was 229.4 per 100k in the USA [1] And yet this always gets cited as some reason to keep the police around. These sorts of threats that people cite are exceedingly rare, and yet used to fuel a vision of the world that's one of requiring constantly vigilance and paranoia.
[1] https://www.consumeraffairs.com/homeowners/home-invasion-sta...
The advice given by Toronto police is to leave your car keys out by your front door so that armed home invaders can get what they came for with ease. The police don’t show up to protect you and your property. They also don’t want to risk their own safety around armed invaders.
Per this 2020 article, police offer is at #22 for fatal injury rate in the US:
* https://www.ishn.com/articles/112748-top-25-most-dangerous-j...
[1]: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cfoi.t03.htm
Yep! Stand around for 4-5 hours on a Saturday morning (often hungover; I personally know cops) and pad that overtime and pension.
And beyond that they're so awash with money that they're turning into paramilitary forces.
And on top of that we have a regime of legalized theft aka civil asset forfeiture. Often the police departments get to keep some or all of what they seize. They'll often get a cut of ticket revenue too such that cops will have quotas of tickets to write.
Combine the two and you end up with so-called "forfeiture corridors". You might find that drugs go one way but the cash goes the other and they'll only police the cash direction with excessive stops and tickets to seize as much acashn as they can get and then the burden is on you to prove the cash is not the proceeds of crime.
But "audacious" and "bold" are probably better words to describe it. Maybe I'm overly cautious, but it's inherently risky to confront someone who has taken your property since they have already shown a willingness to break the law. It's a coin toss whether they will perceive the confrontation as a threat and react violently.
All that without even considering that he was dealing with a police officer who, de facto, will be given the benefit of the doubt in a confrontation and may behave accordingly. Not all cops are bad, I think most are good actually, but you have no way of knowing which one you will get in a situation like this. I'm very glad that this ended well (as well as it could have) for him.
He's not brave. He's dense enough to still believe in the system. See also: Knocking on the door of a cop who you've got beef with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...
See this post elsewhere in the thread too:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48095493
Should be illegal.
And I don’t have a source, so it’s anecdotal but one of those things where you read enough of these cases and even see how cops are trained that the intent for most stops unrelated to genuine traffic violations is to get cause to search the vehicle.
I think back to some of those corridors within the United States where law enforcement abuse cash forfeiture laws to take peoples money.
Might I suggest that you research it and post what you find.
I am neither left nor right, but I feel like I need to say this much more in spaces that heavily lean left -- I wish we would focus on the actual crimes the police are there to stop as much as we do the police reform.
The right to demand a blood test or other mechanism of having the state own the burden of proof might be inconvenient but it's integral to a fairly operating system, just like the right to demand a lawyer or representation.
Having criminal police is possibly worse than having no police. "First, do no harm" right?
I have tremendous respect for the work that good police do. I support laws that have higher penalties for crimes against police and other public workers. But respect is a two-way street. I also support higher penalties for crimes committed by police and other public workers.
And note that “involving” is very much not the same thing as “caused by”. Yes, “caused by” will be a big chunk of it, but there's a reason the latter term is not used.
They have breathalyzers and blood tests. Field sobriety tests are not there to help police arrest drunk drivers, they're there to help police arrest whomever they want to.
> I wish we would focus on the actual crimes the police are there to stop as much as we do the police reform.
The U.S. is one of the most punishment-happy countries in the world. Nearly every politician vows to be "tough on crime". This is an incredible thing to say given the past 50 years of policing and justice in the U.S. Won't somebody please think of the children!?
> I am neither left nor right
The "center" is constantly moving and has been, on average, shifting far to the right over the last 20 years. Anyone who claims to be a centrist is therefore either changing their politics with the wind, or was far right all along.
You're wrong about that. "Sobriety" isn't limited to alcohol. You'll notice that most laws against drunk driving are actually against being "intoxicated" or "impaired". Breathalyzers and blood tests are for gathering indisputable evidence.
Field sobriety tests are there to determine if you're motor skills are impaired. If an officer observers a person driving erratically and they can't walk a straight line or touch their own nose, they shouldn't be driving. You can be arrested for DUI [of sleeping pills].
The only time police would specify a DUI was for alcohol is if a breathalyzer or blood test showed that. Even if the officer says there was a beer can on the floor and they smelled like alcohol, they could be under the legal limit and be on any number of other substances so the DUI wouldn't specify alcohol.
There are plenty of reasons that someone might not be able to demonstrate this to the subjective opinion of an officer and be completely unimpaired and competent at driving. e.g. people with atypical minds or bodies
Police generally ask people to do these tests when they have already made up their mind about someone being impaired. The only point of the test, practically, is generate standardized documentation. It is a dog and pony show.
Other countries that have serious anti-driving-impairment programs don't use these types of subjective tests -- they test people for using the substances directly.
These days, so much of that will be recorded on video, from the dash cam to the body cam, it's usually cut and dry that the person accused is under the influence of something.
> people with atypical minds or bodies
This is a reasonable concern so I don't want to dismiss it but this isn't even close to the typical situation and, to emphasize, the reason for the stop is usually bad driving and the officer is looking for an explanation. Before a sobriety test is administered, there is already a cause for being pulled over. So people who can't pass a sobriety test because they have a physical or mental reason they can't only have that one piece of evidence against them removed.
I'm sure you can construct a hypothetical case where a person with a speech impairment, an inner ear deformaty and who's eyes shake when moving left and right gets arrested for DUI because they appear impaired but they weren't pulled over for those reasons.
Not only does it cause significant problems for people who are unjustly jailed and charged for crimes they didn't commit -- but it also lets drunk drivers off the hook when the flimsy evidence fails to convict. These aren't hypotheticals, both are very common.
Police in the US simply need to be equipped with roadside chemical tests for substances. They exist, they just simply don't use them.
Here's is an example of what other countries do:
https://adf.org.au/insights/roadside-drug-testing/
> The officer takes a sample of your saliva by placing an absorbent collector in the mouth or on the tongue. The sample is then analysed at the roadside. If the test is positive, it must be confirmed by laboratory testing before charges can be laid.
Doesn't that sound like a better solution than: "The officer makes you stand on one leg and say the alphabet backwards, if they don't like they way you did it, you are charged with DUI"?
> I'm sure you can construct a hypothetical case where a person with a speech impairment, an inner ear deformaty and who's eyes shake when moving left and right gets arrested for DUI because they appear impaired but they weren't pulled over for those reasons.
The more common, and even more scary issue, is that sometimes people undergoing medical emergencies are arrested for DUI and sent to jail instead of a hospital. Which is again another situation that would be avoided entirely by roadside testing. This is such a common issue for diabetics that police normally do train to recognize the difference, but since they are not medical professionals and don't have adequate equipment, they still often confuse the two.
Watch this dashcam video: https://www.wsmv.com/2025/10/02/retired-deputy-arrested-dui-...
To support the societal belief in law and order, it is much more important to punish the meta issues where the government is itself causing harm. It's not that there should magically be no crime committed by police officers. But rather every single crime should be investigated and prosecuted to the utmost extent.
At any rate, the solution is to fire all of the corrupt cops and strictly enforce ethical and legal rules. Everything considered to be evidence needs to have an actual scientific basis for it. No more arresting people for being drunk because an officer with three months of training is considered to be an expert judge in impairment. Officers caught lying about the basis for an arrest should be imprisoned. Enforce the law, but do it in both directions.
But your car still gets towed even if you pass the tests at the station and don't ultimately get charged because you refused the field test.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGHFpc6uiWA
In California, you are required to submit to chemical testing (breath, urine, or blood — I don’t recall the rules for which applies in which situations). However, you are not required to otherwise talk to or perform the absurd procedure of the field sobriety test (“you have the right to remain silent”).
For example, https://www.gov.uk/stopped-by-police-while-driving-your-righ....
I took OpenAI's references as correct without checking legislation as I'm on my phone.
If the police decide to have you exit the car and do the field tests, the odds are high they have already decided to arrest you. At that point, it's best to refuse all unless you have had absolutely zero drugs/alcohol. And then the question has to be why did they have you get out the car.
Look for “if cops say I smell Alcohol, say these words” on YouTube, gives you tips on how to respond if asked about alcohol use or doing a sobriety test.
I said I hadn't and didn't know anybody who did. It's true that I don't and had not been around any and there's no way my car smelled like drugs. I think I was on the verge of heat stroke and basically didn't respond with any level of stress to anything he said. I was being pulled over for driving without a seatbelt, which I almost never do, but it was 95 degrees and my AC was broken and I couldn't bring myself to put my back against the chair (plus I was in the middle of nowhere).
Another cop also showed up reasonlessly to hang around behind the other one with his lights on after awhile (I'd pulled into a gas station), which I think was also supposed to freak me out. I ended up excusing myself to go stand in the gas station to cool down and when I came back they were gone
A positive result will get you arrested and taken to the station, where they have the (non-portable) court admissible calibrated kit.
And if giving every cop a calibrated breathalizer is too expensive: give them a reasonably-accurate one for in the field, then take everyone who fails it to the station for a retest on an expensive calibrated one.
Per the article, he refused the old walk-along-a-straight-line-without-swaying, not a blood test (nor even a breathalyser).
Blood tests are not administered in the field, they would be administered at a nearby medical facility, later in this process.
> That's more than the salary of the Illinois State Police director.
It’s like saying why does the drug cartel leader keep selling drugs, he’s swimming in cash (literally).
The final paragraph:
"Court overtime
For every DUI arrest made, state police troopers must appear in court, and in evidence motions filed with the court, attorneys have said this has led to a staggering amount of overtime pay for Trooper Bradley.
State records show in 2024, Bradley nearly tripled his salary, earning nearly $250,000 in one year."
> Why is someone making that much money [from] stealing a MacBook
instead of
> Why is someone [who is] making that much money stealing a MacBook
Sorry about that.
If you've never heard of Civil Asset Forfeiture, it will probably make your blood boil if you look it up and learn about its abuse.
Gotta love voting/flagging rings.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48095123
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48095098
Just HOW many stories of civil asset forfeiture, blatant theft, assault, murder, and everything do we need to see that policing in this country is a criminal gang backed by government?
And even for simpler crap that everyone gets hit by, is speed limit laws. You can be pulled over for even 1mph over 'limit'. And more gross, is that its not a safety issue, but a revenue enhancement issue. Its a way they can steal legally, AND fish for more things to screw you over with.
And naturally, any thing these pigs do "in the operation of policing" makes them immune, for <handwaving magical> reasons.
Alcoholic drinks do smell though. I can smell if my girlfriend has been drinking. The smell of a bar is very distinctive
You're right!
>In court filings, attorneys representing the state and Bradley have argued Holland's lawsuit should be dismissed as the trooper has "sovereign immunity" as a member of law enforcement, and that it was a "lawful" traffic stop.
The concept is right but sovereign immunity is about states and between states.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_Unit...
That bit of justification seems absolutely bananas to me.
That is horrible anti-american behavior. It's the definition of corruption; and goes against the fundamental principles of the founding of the US.
And, to put it quite bluntly: Cops walking around demanding tips from affluent Americans will quickly get shut down because no one will stand for it.
Ive had police in Mexico just walk up and steal $100+ from my wallet. It was refreshing as in the US they instead police have just dragged me to jail on fabricated allegations. When Mexican police can get all they want by just stealing my money and not my time, it feels like living in a more free country, liberating comparatively.
------- re: below (throttled) ----------
They got a warrant afterwards which they somehow applied retroactively. I found out police had systematically been doing this to people and in fact already sued for this. The hospital had also already been put on notice after ACLU sued in a different state.
I contacted several lawyers and the ACLU (since they already had posted notice for this same thing). ACLU was radio silence for the entire couple years of the statue of limitations, so no help there. The best shot I had was contacting a couple lawyers who specifically sued against the same people who had done it before. They lost the last time due to the courts considering the hospital as effectively deputized as federal officers while it happened. The courts/state got around the lawsuit by claiming it is medical care whenever the warrant issue come up, then claim it is a LEO search whenever the medical aspects of the search were challenged, creating a catch 22.
All lawyers involved told me they'd given up such cases (impossible to win). The prior, almost identical but even worse case (woman finger-raped by doctors without a warrant) was lost due to the catch-22 of it being a "search" whenever the medical aspects were challenged and being "medical care" whenever the search aspects were challenged. This meant it was effectively impossible to challenge it from any available angle.
As for the bill, I never paid it. Still chased by debt collectors for it though.
Basically if federal officers involved you are fucked. Lon Horiuchi straight up sniped an innocent woman holding a baby in her arms, over a husband's failure to appear in court, and even he couldn't be held accountable.
They (the cops) can't force a hospital to do anything without a warrant. Sue the hospital & police; if you can't afford a lawyer, take whoever billed you to small claims to get your money back.
As I mentioned, the same hospital system had been sued before for this same thing though and the hospital/officers won, even without a warrant. As long as you're innocent you can't do much about it since the civil suites lose and you won't be in criminal court where you can probably squash the evidence.
Assuming the best case version of this guy’s story he arrested this guy for the DUI and then forgot to check in his wallet, key, and laptop or whatever. Fine, not unbelievable. But it doesn’t look like he followed up about the DUI thing.
I assume it varies but for most places if you refuse roadside field sobriety tests and they feel you have given indicators of impairment they will take you into custody. Then they'll take you to the station and give you the option of taking a breathalyzer and if you refuse again your license is automatically suspended for a year.
The cop got a free laptop so of course the ball got dropped. The point is he they didn't want it dragged through court where that could be easily uncovered so he just dropped the ball. $5k+ lawyer fees minimum if they decide to prosecute the DUI vs $2k at best laptop. The math is supposed easy for the accused.
So then this guy goes and gets the GPS info, confronts the cop, it spirals, whole thing comes crashing down.
And now the state is going after this cop because he's at the very least implicitly making DUI enforcement look bad.
Much as I hope Bradley would be fired and lose his pension for abuse of power, this part is on Holland. In my state, refusing a breathalyzer is by law an automatic penalty because of the "implied consent statute" that you accept when you get behind the wheel: automatic license suspension for 1 year, and you still have to face the officer's testimony. There are consequences to the refusal that have nothing to do with the officer.
Ask yourself why an officer would want to use a set of tests that require being subjective instead of deferring to a breathalyzer.
>No. Field sobriety tests are not mandatory in Illinois. A driver may legally refuse to participate in field sobriety testing without violating Illinois law. These roadside tests are voluntary and are not part of the State’s implied consent laws.
https://dohmanlaw.com/refusing-a-field-sobriety-test-in-illi...